In advance of his team’s game against Texas A&M this weekend, Louisiana-Monroe head coach and former Auburn head coach Terry Bowden stopped by The Paul Finebaum Show on Thursday for a wide-ranging chat about his own team and his history in the SEC.

Bowden’s team will face Jimbo Fisher’s group at 3 p.m. Saturday at Kyle Field.

Fisher was an assistant coach for Bowden in Auburn.

Bowden was Auburn’s head coach from 1993-1998. He went undefeated in his first season taking over from Pat Dye, though Auburn faced a postseason ban that year due to NCAA sanctions.

Bowden discussed being Auburn’s head coach immediately after Dye, as well as Auburn’s famous 1994 comeback 36-33 win over then-No. 1-ranked Florida in Gainesville: including a story where he called his father, legendary Florida State head coach Bobby Bowden, for advice at halftime.

Below is a transcript of their conversation.

Finebaum: “You mentioned Spurrier. I heard this version of the story from Spurrier. I remember being on the sidelines of this game in 1994. Auburn is playing the number-one team in the country. End up beating them, continuing your undefeated streak through the ‘93 season. But afterward, I remember running into Steve and he was just fuming, even though it was his fault that they lost the game. He was trying to run the score up on you and he threw an interception. He was upset and I think he’s still upset to this day because he claims that you called your father at halftime for advice. I don’t know if I’ve ever asked you that. Can you remember back to 1994 and tell us what happened?”

Bowden: “I don’t know why he’s upset. He’s the consummate family man himself. A big family, a wonderful wife and children. Probably a ton of grandchildren.

Actually, we were having a great first half, and I was sitting there by myself as all the coaches were going off to talk their positions. There was a phone sitting there on the wall. I pick it up and I get a direct line to my dad. I said, ‘Dad, what do you think?’ That’s what I said. I just said ‘Dad, what do you think?’ I was just kind of passing a couple of minutes and Dad said, ‘Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it.’ That was the extent of the phone call. I thought there was zero chance the phone would work, let alone someone answer the phone.

But the biggest thing, you said it, Steve Spurrier is so competitive, he wasn’t beating us bad enough. They threw, I want to say, four or five interceptions, and at the very end of the game, when it was over, he was throwing the ball deep, we intercept it, we score with 15 seconds left.

I think we were like 17.5-point underdogs after a 15-game winning streak. We were running a 15-game winning streak, he had never lost an SEC game at home. I know that was one he wishes he could get back. But he had to help us there a little bit on that one because they were an unbelievably gifted team. Danny Wuefferl, the quarterback who won the Heisman trophy the next year. It is one of the big wins in Auburn, to go down there in The Swamp and extend our winning stream to about 15 or 16 games.”

Finebaum: “You’ve had this amazing career. For those who don’t remember, this was the period where you came in 1993. You replaced a legend that really in many reasons was a part of Auburn like your dad was at Florida State. We don’t have time to go through the transition from Pat Dye to Terry Bowden. Books will be written about that one day. Coach, you get off to this amazing start, you’re the youngest coach in Division I at the time, and you go undefeated your first year at Auburn. Auburn was on probation there, couldn’t play for the SEC championship, and then you extend this into the next year by beating the number one team. You beat Spurrier two years in a row. What was that like at that age to have literally the whole world wrapped around you?”

Bowden: “Well you know, in the state of Alabama where people live and die football. I didn’t even know what was happening. It was too much going on. Probably, you get to be kind of a coach that you think somewhere along the line, you almost think you can’t do anything wrong. Obviously, that only lasts forever.”

Let’s go back to Pat Dye. I will say this. He got Auburn where it was. He got the game back in Auburn. He got to where we could beat Alabama, the Bear Bryant. He took us from the Bear Bryant era and no one can replace Pat Dye and what he did for that program in those years that he was there. I think he had a team that was in turmoil when I got there because of the Eric Ramsey thing, we were going on probation. People were microphoning people. It was an ugly situation. But we weren’t devoid of talent. I talked about Stan White and so many other guys on that team. Steve Davis and Bostic and all. We were not devoid of talent, we were just devoid of a feeling that we were together. That things weren’t going wrong. I came at the right time, but I will say this. In my fifth year, there was not a single player on that team– we did come one point away from beating Peyton Manning for the SEC championship in 1997.

We did keep that streak going during that time. And this is I guess our 30th year anniversary to that year, but like I said, that was a good time. Jimbo was there. Tom was on the staff. Great coaching staff. I was fortunate to have a bunch of young coaches that have gone on to be incredibly successful assistants or head coaches on that staff.

Matt Cohen covers Auburn sports for AL.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @Matt_Cohen_ or email him at [email protected]